President Trump came close to setting a record for the longest State of the Union address Tuesday night, taking one hour and 20 minutes to say 6,000 words. But it may have been what he didn’t say that spoke the loudest about his priorities and how much he has fundamentally changed the Republican Party in his 12 months as president.

In a break with GOP orthodoxy, he did not talk about the budget deficit; he did not talk about the national debt; he did not talk about restraining spending. The only time he used the word “deficit” was a reference to an “infrastructure deficit.” The only time he used the word “spending” was a reference to a border agent “spending the last 15 years” fighting gangs.

Those absences make this speech an historic outlier, leaving Trump badly out of step with his adopted party’s long fealty to fiscal discipline and with his Republican predecessors in the Oval Office. The last president not to mention the deficit and spending in a State of the Union address was Richard Nixon in 1974. In the 36 State of the Union addresses between Nixon and Trump—given by three Democratic presidents and four Republican presidents—the deficit was a fixture of every speech.

Nixon could be excused. He was more worried in 1974 about the Watergate investigation and the energy crisis. The budget deficit, at a tiny $6.1 billion that year, was barely worth mentioning. The same cannot be said about the situation facing Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress in 2018. The deficit for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 is projected by the Office of Management and Budget at $666 billion. Stan Collender, executive vice president of Qorvis MSL Group and a leading budget analyst, sees deficits topping $1 trillion in the years to come.

There were four consecutive years of $1 trillion-plus deficits from 2009 to 2012 because of the temporary spending done to combat the Great Recession of 2008. The coming deficits are different because they are a result of more permanent tax cuts and spending programs championed by Trump. That includes spending on the military, border security, disaster relief, and an end to the federal subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, which increases the deficit by $19 billion a year.

It should not be surprising that Trump cares little about the deficit. In his campaign, he boasted, “I’m the king of debt. I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me.” He also pledged not to balance the budget by reforming entitlements. He never pretended to be a deficit hawk.

More surprising is the disappearance of the deficit hawks in Congress who squawked loudest when President Obama was in office. Part of the explanation is simple politics, as GOP Rep. Mark Walker sheepishly acknowledged to The New York Times in September. “It’s a great talking point when you have an administration that’s Democrat-led,” said Walker, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a group of conservative House members. “It’s a little different now that Republicans have both houses and the administration.”

A bigger part of the explanation may be that Trump, through sheer force of personality, his trademark bluster ,and the powers of his office, has already moved the Republican Party far from its traditional fiscal moorings. An early sign was the watering down of the GOP platform’s plank on spending. In 2012, the platform warned of a “debt explosion” and pledged “immediate reductions in federal spending.” In 2016, that became a pledge to “prioritize thrift over extravagance.”

The changed mindset of the party was clear in the wake of the State of the Union address. The lone conservative voice sounding an alarm was commentator Stephen F. Hayes in The Weekly Standard, who lamented that “nobody seems to care.” Among those silent about the deficit’s absence from the speech were longtime deficit hawks Jenny Beth Martin, president of the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, and Steve Forbes, chairman of Forbes Media. Instead, they gushed about the tax cuts.

In his 1983 State of the Union address, President Reagan warned that deficits were “an unconscionable burden of national debt for our children.” In 1988, Reagan mocked those who said deficits “would make us prosperous and not to worry about the debt, because we owe it to ourselves.” In his 1975 State of the Union address, President Ford argued that opposing deficits “is a question of simple arithmetic.” Forty-three years later, a new Republican president and a Republican Congress have adopted new math and the political equation is no longer quite so simple.

"President Trump signed a sweeping spending bill Friday afternoon, averting another partial government shutdown. The action came after Trump had declared a national emergency in a move designed to circumvent Congress and build additional barriers at the southern border, where he said the United States faces 'an invasion of our country.'"

Source:

REDIRECTS $8 BILLION

Trump Declares National Emergency

6 days ago

THE DETAILS

"President Donald Trump on Friday declared a state of emergency on the southern border and immediately direct $8 billion to construct or repair as many as 234 miles of a border barrier. The move — which is sure to invite vigorous legal challenges from activists and government officials — comes after Trump failed to get the $5.7 billion he was seeking from lawmakers. Instead, Trump agreed to sign a deal that included just $1.375 for border security."

Source:

COULD SOW DIVISION AMONG REPUBLICANS

House Will Condemn Emergency Declaration

1 weeks ago

THE DETAILS

"House Democrats are gearing up to pass a joint resolution disapproving of President Trump’s emergency declaration to build his U.S.-Mexico border wall, a move that will force Senate Republicans to vote on a contentious issue that divides their party. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Thursday evening in an interview with The Washington Post that the House would take up the resolution in the coming days or weeks. The measure is expected to easily clear the Democratic-led House, and because it would be privileged, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would be forced to put the resolution to a vote that he could lose."

Source:

MILITARY CONSTRUCTION, DRUG FORFEITURE FUND

Where Will the Emergency Money Come From?

1 weeks ago

THE DETAILS

"ABC News has learned the president plans to announce on Friday his intention to spend about $8 billion on the border wall with a mix of spending from Congressional appropriations approved Thursday night, executive action and an emergency declaration. A senior White House official familiar with the plan told ABC News that $1.375 billion would come from the spending bill Congress passed Thursday; $600 million would come from the Treasury Department's drug forfeiture fund; $2.5 billion would come from the Pentagon's drug interdiction program; and through an emergency declaration: $3.5 billion from the Pentagon's military construction budget."

Source:

TRUMP SAYS HE WILL SIGN

House Passes Funding Deal

1 weeks ago

THE DETAILS

"The House passed a massive border and budget bill that would avert a shutdown and keep the government funded through the end of September. The Senate passed the measure earlier Thursday. The bill provides $1.375 billion for fences, far short of the $5.7 billion President Trump had demanded to fund steel walls. But the president says he will sign the legislation, and instead seek to fund his border wall by declaring a national emergency."